Thursday, November 26, 2009

F3

Stanley Kubrick hides this fact so incredibly well but one of the most intriguing things about this picture that I bet you never noticed until now is, it’s not there on the wall at any other time in the movie. The most enigmatic prop in movie history just appears on the wall in the last shot? Within the movie's reality there has to be a plausible reason for this and I believe it was “Shined” up there. After all “Shining” is what this story is about, not reincarnation and there’s not a shred of evidence that any supernatural power other than “Shining” is going on in this movie. Something else happened to Jack Torrance at the end of this story. We see his face but it’s not reincarnation as the definition of the word is very precise and the place we're looking at in the photo is not The Overlook hotel.

Jack's never been in hotel in 1921 and the final picture wasn’t there earlier in the movie because, in the story’s time line, what it depicts simply hasn’t happened yet. The picture was not created and does not exist until after Jack is dead. Throughout the movie he’s alive and in the last shot he’s not. It’s our vision of Jack’s future that Stanley Kubrick made to look like the past, and it happens at the very end of the story when all the cast members with this ability are gone, “Remember what Mr. Hallorann said. It's just like pictures in a book, Danny. It isn't real.”

The photo is also another example of doubling; Jack’s been frozen again for a second time, for the rest of time. “Shined” onto a wall in a hotel where he will be frozen in that photo “for ever, and ever, and ever” as long as movies are seen.